The Metuchen High School girls basketball team suffered some growing pains last week in losses to Mother Seton, Highland Park, and Governor Livingston. With the losses, the Bulldogs fell to 4-7 on the season.
“Since the Christmas break, we hit a skid,” Metuchen head coach Val Gazda said. “The problem we’re experiencing is that most teams are bigger and deeper than we are. Our kids are giving their all every game, but it becomes a matter of whether or not our tank can hold it. We’re simply running out of gas against these bigger and deeper teams.”
In the team’s 58-44 loss to Mother Seton, Metuchen’s Stacy Carr led the Bulldogs with 14 points and teammate Lindsey Peragallo finished with 12. Metuchen’s Sara Corson added eight points.
“The Mother Seton game was followed by a tough overtime loss to Highland Park,” Gazda said. “That was a game that I think we really should have pulled out a win. This game showed that we’re getting there, but we just came up a little short.”
The week concluded with a 51-37 loss to Gov. Livingston in which Carr led the team in scoring once again with a 19-point performance. Oyler contributed 10 while three different Gov. Livingston players finished with nine.
“I thought we gave a nice defensive effort against them,” Gazda said. “Governor Livingston was another team that was too big for us. In some of these losses, I think we were just one big kid short of winning.”
This week the Bulldogs will face another tough challenge in the form of Middlesex and Spotswood, two teams that beat Metuchen by double-digit figures earlier in the season.
“We’ll be facing the top two teams in our division, so it’s definitely a big week,” Gazda said. “Let any team take us lightly and that could be the worst thing for them, because we’ve been showing up to play every game.”
Metuchen opened the week at Middlesex on Tuesday. Middlesex entered the week fresh off a 62-21 victory over South River and a 61- 34 win over Mother Seton. Spotswood also enters the week on a roll after earning a 39-33 win over Ridge followed by a 44-31 victory against Timothy Christian.
“We know we’re at the bottom of our division at the moment,” Gazda said. “A bright spot for us is that the team has developed a lot of heart over the last couple of weeks. We’ve discovered that different people can put the ball through the hoop and that our heart is huge. We’re moving in the right direction, and that is always a hopeful sign. We have the ability to surprise some teams and hopefully that is something we can do to get some momentum.”